from the that-seems-a-bit-more-reasonable dept

With all of the discussion over the size of the awards in the Jammie Thomas and Joel Tenenbaum rulings, it appears that the courts over in Finland are a bit more reasonable. An appeals court has upheld a ruling against a guy who was found guilty of sharing 150 albums online, and the court has ordered him to pay 3,000 euros. I'm trying to figure out how 24 songs = $1.92 million here in the US, but 150 albums and 1,850 songs = 3,000 euros (a little over $4,000). Which one seems more aligned with the actual action?

from the P2P-is-not-Pirate2Pirate dept

A bunch of folks have sent in this story about a copyright lobbying group in Finland that is threatening to sue a website that helps people rent textbooks, oddly calling it "The Pirate Bay for textbooks." That makes no sense if you understand what the site actually does. It's not hosting ebooks. It's literally connecting people who own textbooks to others, so they can rent their physical textbooks. It's difficult to see how that could be considered copyright infringement at all, let alone anything similar to The Pirate Bay. But, in this day and age, where the copyright lobbyists see almost anything as infringement, perhaps it's no surprise they'd freak out about this as well.

from the some-good-news dept

Back in February, we found it disturbing that Finland was allowing the results of an election to stand, despite the fact that at least 2% of the votes had gone missing due to e-voting glitches. However, it looks like some sense of sanity has been restored as a higher court has now rejected the election results and ordered a new election. One hopes that the new election won't involve similarly screwed up e-voting machines. Speaking of which... in a separate article, we find yet another story of e-voting machines that were "mis-calibrated" in such a way that made it difficult to impossible for people to vote for candidates of their choice. At some point, given all of these problems with e-voting machines, you have to ask why elections officials still rely on them.

from the who-needs-trust-when-you-have-technology? dept

Last month, we noted the controversy in Finland, as a new law was up for debate concerning whether or not companies there could spy on employee email. Beyond the general controversy, there were rumors that Nokia, who had been caught breaking the existing law by spying on employee emails before, had supposedly threatened to leave Finland if the law wasn't changed to allow such activities. Nokia has vehemently denied this, but hasn't denied that it supported the law. So... it's probably not a huge surprise that the Finnish Parliament has approved the law.

To be honest, the details of the law aren't that extreme. It doesn't let the company even read the emails -- just record who is emailing whom. For company email, that seems perfectly reasonable. Hell, the day this law passed, RIM admitted not only does it track and record all company email, but it does the same thing for all phone calls as well. Perhaps a more important question is whether or not that's a useful way to spend company resources? The companies obviously talk about the importance of "protecting" their IP, but I once worked for a company that recorded all phone calls as well, and all it really did was make all of the employees angry, disgruntled and less interested in working hard. Having your bosses distrust you can do that...

from the what's-1%-here-or-there? dept

In the latest sad saga concerning e-voting mishaps, it appears that Finland's courts have agreed to certify a recent election, despite approximately 2% of the votes not being counted (found via Slashdot). Also, there were additional problems as it's been discovered that despite the requirement for an "anonymous election" the voting software stored identifying information, along with how each voter voted. Oops. Once again, we're left wondering why various governments keep trusting such questionable equipment?

from the or-it-will-leave-Finland? dept

There's quite a story making the rounds, suggesting that Nokia is putting significant pressure on the Finnish government, demanding that it pass a law allowing it to spy on its employees, or the company will leave Finland. Nokia is quickly denying the claim, which does seem pretty extreme. However, that doesn't mean that Nokia hasn't put political pressure on the government to pass this law. Apparently, the company has been caught multiple times illegally spying on employees, and has worked hard to get this law passed, which would legalize its actions. Despite legal experts all insisting that the law is unconstitutional, apparently the Finnish Parliament's Constitutional Law Committee has decided to move forward with it anyway -- which is what resulted in the speculation about the threat to leave Finland.

from the camouflage-wears-you dept

Apparently, intellectual property issues can show up even in the middle of a warzone. It seems that some Finnish officials, reviewing images and videos of the Russian invasion of Georgia earlier this year were somewhat upset to note that Russian military uniforms appeared to have copied Finnish military camouflage design -- which, yes, the Finnish government has legally protected in Europe (found via Open IT Strategies). Finland has decided not to pursue the issue, and Russian officials deny the copying, but it still shows how weird a world we live in when governments are using intellectual property rights to try to protect military camouflage designs.

from the absolutely-nothing dept

The story of the Finnish school shooting that left 11 people (including the shooter) dead is certainly a tragedy, and you can understand why people immediately respond to such things by looking for something to blame, or some law or process that needs to be changed -- but at some point you have to admit that it's going to be impossible to totally prevent such actions. Yet, for some reason, people always want to place some sort of "blame" for these sorts of things on the internet. Witness comments from Finnish Prime Minister, Matti Vanhanen, where he talks about various changes to look at, such as with gun laws, but also says:

"The internet and YouTube forums... are not another planet. This is part of our world and we adults have the responsibility to check what is happening, and create borders and safety there."

But, the thing is, those channels are being monitored, and they were watched in this case. In fact, as nearly every press report on the shooting mentions, police visited the shooter a day before the shooting, due to a YouTube video he posted where he was heard pointing a gun at the camera and saying "you will die next." So it's difficult to see how the internet is even remotely worth calling out here. The internet was used to alert authorities, it's just that there wasn't any evidence of a crime or intention to commit a crime at that point. So why bring it up at all?

from the so-that-makes-it-effective-again? dept

Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote about a rather confusing legal decision that came out of Finland that said that no laws were broken in showing how to circumvent the notoriously weak CSS encryption scheme found on DVDs. The reasoning was that there was nothing wrong with breaking an encryption scheme if it was "ineffective." Of course, that opens up all sorts of questions. If it's illegal to crack DRM that is effective, but the only way to prove that it's ineffective is to crack it... then, what happens? And, of course, once the encryption is cracked, haven't you then automatically shown that it's ineffective, thereby making it okay -- even if it was effective until you cracked it? The mind boggles. Apparently, it was equally mind boggling for a Finnish appeals court who has overturned the ruling. That said, the new ruling is still problematic. It still seems troublesome that anyone could be found to have broken the law for merely explaining how to circumvent a copy protection scheme. That holding leads to obviously bad outcomes. Anti-circumvention clauses are really dangerous restrictions on free speech, trying to criminalize the explanation of how to do something that's potentially infringing, rather than the infringement itself. It's a crutch relied on by the content industry that still can't come to terms with the fact that copy protection isn't a good idea. But rather than deal with that via business model changes, it simply passes laws that tries to stop people from doing anything the industry doesn't like.

from the blocked! dept

Back in 2002, we wrote about how the Australian government was forcing ISPs to block sites that it claimed displayed child pornography. Last year, the government wanted to allow Australian police to add to the blocklist. The problem was that there was no review whatsoever -- and no way to make sure the sites being blocked actually were questionable, rather than just sites the police didn't like. When we raised this question back in 2002, someone responsible for the filters in Australia argued with us in the comments that we were wrong to question the policy and insisting that, even though there was no way to determine what was being banned, we should just trust those in charge of the filters that it was for our own good. Of course, when a government representative (or a representative of a company doing the government's will) says "just trust us," you know you should be worried.

To prove that point, take a look at what's happening in Finland, where a very similar law is in place, specifically designed to have ISPs block child pornography. There's just one little problem. An investigation into what's being blocked shows that many of the sites on the list appear to contain no pornography at all (child or otherwise). However, among the sites blocked is an anti-censorship site that argues against Finland's policies. There are also the website for a doll company and some computer help forums. The research also showed that there are plenty of "adult oriented" sites, but that most of them appear to be perfectly legal and have nothing to do with child pornography at all. However, since the list isn't public and there's no way to know what's on the list (other than thanks to researchers like those who brought this to light) it's tough for anyone to know if the government is actually abiding by the law. Once again, it looks like you shouldn't "just trust" the government when it claims it's protecting you.